More police officers patrolling the streets of Frankford

“I’ve got twenty new cops and I put them on foot beats,” Capt. John Mc­Clo­s­key told mem­bers of the Frank­ford Civic As­so­ci­ation at their meet­ing earli­er this month.

Mc­Clo­s­key, the 15th Po­lice Dis­trict’s new com­mand­er, said the foot patrols will be walked in four-block grids, half dur­ing the day, half at night.

The dis­trict’s biggest prob­lem area is its south­ern third, or Po­lice Ser­vice Area 1, which in­cludes Frank­ford, the cap­tain said, where there are shoot­ings, rob­ber­ies and more.

Po­lice re­cently raided an il­leg­al speak­easy on the 4700 block of Ox­ford Ave. and caught a man with a sawed-off shot­gun, he said. Guns and drugs were found in a shop on the 4800 block of Frank­ford Ave.

“We do spot checks on bars,” he said.

Po­lice are crack­ing down on takeout busi­nesses on res­id­en­tial blocks that stay open past the law­ful 11 p.m. clos­ing time be­cause “they’re seen to be a hangout for kids and drug deal­ers,” the cap­tain said.

Mc­Clo­s­key said pros­ti­tu­tion ar­rests are up in the lower end of the dis­trict. He said of­ficers who spot street­walk­ers are giv­ing each one warn­ing to leave an area and then ar­rest­ing them if they see them again. Mc­Clo­s­key said po­lice re­cently ar­res­ted 27 to 30 pros­ti­tutes.

“A lot were men dressed up like wo­men,” he said.

Mc­Clo­s­key told res­id­ents they will see more po­lice, but stressed those of­ficers need to hear from res­id­ents be­cause they know their own neigh­bor­hoods best.

Of­ficers are busy, he said.

“They fly from job to job. You know more about what’s go­ing on out there than we do,” he said.